Tag Archives: pakistan

Pakistan’s Nukes: How Much is Enough?

The time has come to question why the country needs tactical nuclear forces

Marking the anniversary of Pakistan’s 1998 nuclear tests, Nawaz Sharif on Monday boasted of the key role he played as prime minister in bringing about this achievement.  Sharif, who now heads the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, the main opposition party, asserted that his actions have provided an infrangible guarantee of the country’s security vis-à-vis Indian military might, thereby resolving the fundamental vulnerability that had plagued Pakistan since its tumultuous founding.  “India could have attacked Pakistan many times,” he stated, “but due to Pakistan being an atomic power, India could not gather the courage to do so.”

The impact of South Asia’s nuclearization on regional security is a subject of vigorous scholarly debate.  But Sharif’s words raise a basic policy issue: If he truly believes that the country’s defenses are now impregnable, why doesn’t he speak out against the on-going expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal that is rapidly leading Islamabad away from the minimum deterrence posture it declared following the 1998 tests?  After all, if he really means what he said, this expansion is not only militarily unnecessary but also diverts precious economic resources away from more pressing national priorities.

Worries have arisen that South Asia is on the verge of a nuclear arms race that, according to U.S. intelligence experts, “has begun to take on the pace and diversity, although not the size, of U.S.-Soviet nuclear competition during the Cold War.”  Islamabad in particular has added to its armory in dramatic fashion over the past few years and is reportedly on a path to soon eclipse the United Kingdom as the world’s fifth largest nuclear weapons power and to become the fourth largest by the end of the decade, overtaking France.

A 2008 U.S. intelligence assessment noted that “despite pending economic catastrophe, Pakistan is producing nuclear weapons at a faster rate than any other country in the world.”  It is increasing its capacity to generate plutonium and just last week reports emerged about the development of a submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile.  And over the past month it has conducted a spree of missile test-launches, including an air-launched cruise missile and a ballistic missile with a 60-kilometer range that can deliver a small, low-yield nuclear warhead designed for battlefield use.  According to media reports, the military establishment is placing an emphasis on short-range nuclear forces in order to achieve “strategic parity” with India.

So what is driving all this effort?  Despite mounting internal security challenges – including a spectacular terrorist assault upon the Pakistani army’s general headquarters in Rawalpindi in October 2009 – the armed forces continue to be preoccupied, almost to an excessive extent, with the conventional military balance vis-à-vis India.  General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the powerful army chief, regularly cites the risks posed by the Indian army’s “Cold Start” doctrine – which emphasizes the threat of large-scale but calibrated punitive actions in order to deter Pakistani adventurism.

But Kayani’s alarm is exaggerated, as Cold Start is still more of a concept than an operational reality.  Indeed, the present government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to have disowned it altogether.  Moreover, the Indian army’s condition does not inspire much confidence in its ability to carry out the doctrine even of it were assured of political support.  Military leaders reportedly told Mr. Singh in the days following the November 2008 terrorist strikes in Mumbai that the army was utterly ill prepared to go to war.  A 2009 internal assessment that the army submitted to parliament concluded that it will take some two decades for the army to gain full combat preparedness.  And in a February 2010 cable to the State Department, Timothy Roemer, the then-U.S. ambassador in New Delhi, assessed that the Cold Start strategy “may never be put to use on a battlefield because of substantial and serious resource constraints.”  More recent revelations have further underscored the army’s woeful state.

All military establishments tend to inflate the capabilities of their enemies, and the one in Rawalpindi is no exception.  But something more fundamental is at work in driving Pakistan’s nuclear buildup: the dysfunctional state of civil-military relations.  The army’s fixation on the Indian threat is rooted in large measure in a desire to perpetuate its traditional praetorian role.  An important factor, too, is the cloistered nature of the nuclear weapons complex, which not only lacks any semblance of civilian oversight but also impedes interaction with the broader military establishment.  With decision-making compartmentalized within a small coterie of officials, searching examination of the political and military utility of nuclear weapons as well as the development of sound strategies for their employment is severely constrained.

One issue that demands more rigorous scrutiny is why Pakistan is moving toward a Cold War-style strategy by acquiring a capacity to execute battlefield nuclear options against invading Indian forces.  Tactical nuclear forces might have made sense when the United States and the Soviet Union were attempting to extend their deterrence shields thousands of miles away from their national homelands.  But Pakistan needs only to deter its immediate neighbor, whose two largest population centers – Mumbai and Delhi – are within easy reach of existing Pakistani nuclear weapons.  Moreover, as I have detailed elsewhere, a minimal deterrence posture seems to have worked just fine in safeguarding Pakistani territory from Indian attack during the serious military crises in 1999 and 2001-02.

The good news is that some Pakistani leaders are starting to ask the right sort of questions.  Nawaz Sharif in the past has called for a reduction in the heavy share of the budget consumed by the military, and General Kayani recently acknowledged the need for greater balance in defense and development spending.  The current government of President Asif Ali Zardari has also managed to claw back some authority in the national security arena that previously was the sole province of the men in khaki.

Parliamentary elections are due in early 2013 and perhaps will take place as soon as this fall.  Once a new government is in place in Islamabad, it would do well to ask tough questions about the direction and scope of the nuclear weapons program.  Maybe then Pakistan can find the resources to address dire domestic needs like an increasingly wobbly fiscal situation, a chronic electrical power crisis that some experts suggest is more of a threat to stability than is terrorism, or a woefully underfunded education system that features the lowest enrollment rates in South Asia.

This commentary was originally posted on Chanakya’s Notebook.  I invite you to follow me on Twitter.

Stand by democracy in Pakistan, Mrs. Clinton!

If the U.S. is floundering in a region hosting some of the world’s most dangerous religious extremists, a leading cause is the tribe of “South-Asia experts” nestling comfortably in think tanks, government agencies, and university departments across the U.S. Almost all of them have been apologists for the Pakistan army, as even a cursory reading of their published works during the previous three decades would testify. For years, these analysts and scholars have fed off the disinformation abundant in the ISI trough. Even after 9/11, when the BJP-led government then ruling New Delhi offered Washington an alliance against Wahabbi terror, these “experts” ensured that the offer got spurned, and that once again, the Pakistan army was entrusted with the job of guarding the chicken coop. Unfortunately for U.S. interests, the Clintons’ share with the Bushes’ and the Cheneys’  enormous faith in the “South-Asia” experts who evolved from the crucible of the Cold War, when India leant towards the USSR while the Pakistan army was an alliance partner, albeit on its own terms.

 What those in charge of the formulation of policy towards Pakistan have consistently failed to factor in is the contradiction between a stable Pakistan and a strong military.”South-Asia” experts in the U.S. have been voluble in their claim that it is the military that is imparting stability to Pakistan, and have been dismissive of the few who have pointed out that the reverse is the case. That instability in Pakistan is caused by the bloated power of the military, principally the army, which controls domestic and foreign policy within Pakistan to the same degree as the junta in Myanmar did before the last election.

It is the irredentist adventurism of the Pakistan military and its nurturing of terrorism as a strategy of war that has combined with its Wahabbi outlook and its huge demands on the economy to steadily bring Pakistan to the edge of collapse. Although the “experts” favored by successive U.S. administrations may not be aware of this, the reality is that the Pakistan army is involved in a host of criminal activities, including the transport and refining of narcotics, counterfeiting of currency, and the training of extremist groups. Sadly, all this has been facilitated by the U.S. policy of (effectively) unconditional support for the Pakistan army.

 This is not the occasion to recite a litany of the policy errors made by the Clinton administration in South Asia, except to point out to a grievous error of judgment made by the Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2009, when she secretly joined hands with the Chief of Army Staff Parvez Ashfaq Kayani in forcing the Zardari-Gilani civilian government in Pakistan to reinstate the dismissed Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Choudhury. At that time, this columnist had warned that this move would neuter the efforts of the Zardari-Gilani duo to establish civilian supremacy over the military. And unless this is done, there is zero prospect of a “stable” Pakistan. The military is the wild card in the pack that has ceaselessly fomented a jihadist mentality within Pakistan society, and has created conditions that have led to contempt for democracy within the establishment in that country.

 Secretary of State Clinton has not hidden her antipathy for the President of Pakistan, nor her backing of the Chief of Army Staff.

Perhaps the “South-Asia experts” she relies on for guidance have not told her that General Kayani comes from a fundamentalist background: one that is almost completely Wahabbi. Or that throughout his career he has been a votary of the Zia Doctrine of the unity of jihadis with the Pakistan army. In contrast, while President Zardari shares with Bill Clinton a propensity for making overtures towards seductive females, he comes from a Sufi background, one where there is zero space for religious extremism. Indeed, the ethos of the Zardari family is even more moderate than that of the Bhuttos, whose apparent lack of fundamentalist beliefs cloaks a vacuum in religious attitude that was filled by a pseudo-western lifestyle. The Zardaris are religious, but in the Sufi rather than the Tablighi tradition favored by Kayani

This being the case, Asif Ali Zardari has from the start shown his willingness to take on the Pakistan military and cleanse it of extremists and their sympathizers. Instead of assisting him in this task, the Obama administration drove a dagger into its heart by conniving at the re-instatement of Iftikhar Choudhury as Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) in 2009. While there has been a much effusive comment about the “corruption-fighting” credentials of the CJP, what the U.S. “South-Asia experts” have failed to mention is the fact that Choudhury has not a word to say against an institution that is among the most corrupt in South Asia, which is the Pakistan army. The generals, as also lower-level staff, wallow in graft, to be met by a Nelson’s eye from the Chief Justice, who is equally indulgent towards Mian Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League, whose family leapfrogged from poverty to plenty within a generation by use of methods that defy characterization as ethical or legal. The U.S.-facilitated re-instatement of Choudhury has turned out to be a disaster for democracy in Pakistan, because of the CJP’s obsession with ensuring the dismissal of the elected PPP-led civilian government in Pakistan. Once Kayani got his man in as Chief Justice, and forced through an extension to his tenure as COAS (again with help from Washington), he became even more open in implementing the policy that has been his signature tune since the time he took over as chief of the army.

 This is to do to NATO in Afghanistan what the Pakistan army did to the USSR during the 1980s, ensure defeat. It is no secret that China has entered the Great Game as a major player, or that Beijing is adopting the same strategy in Afghanistan that the U.S. followed two decades ago, which is to use the Pakistan army to ensure the defeat of rival militaries active in the Afghan theater. In 1998, this columnist first mentioned that China was more influential among the senior levels of the Pakistan military than the U.S. This and pointing out the Punjabi domination of the army earned him an effort from Pervez Musharraf to block him from writing in the Times of India. The Pakistan strongman complained to the former Times of India Editorial Director Dileep Padgaonkar about the unflattering comments (though accurate) being made about the Pakistan army and asked why “such writing was being tolerated by the newspaper”. Today, the most recent Kayani visit to Beijing, and his long meetings with Xi Jinping, Wen Jiabao, and other top Communist Party leaders have made clear that Beijing supports the brass in Pakistan in its struggle with the civilian establishment. After all, it is the Pakistan army that is expected to ensure that NATO leave Afghanistan in disgrace by 2014.

 This is the precise reason why President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton need to avoid repeating their 2009 mistake (of backing Kayani over Zardari), and instead support the civilian establishment in Pakistan. If President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani are given backing from the U.S. and the rest of NATO, they can resume the task that was aborted in 2009, which is to de-radicalize the Pakistan army and make it a professional force that would battle terror groups rather than nourish them.

Pakistan: The Turmoil Within

The situation in Pakistan appears to worsen by the day. Consequent to President Asif Ali Zardari’s return from Dubai, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has spoken of “conspiracies being hatched to bring down his elected government.” He has vowed to “continue to fight for the rights of the people of Pakistan, whether or not we remain in the government.” Fears of another military coup are writ large in Gilani’s statement made in Pakistan’s parliament.

In a related development, in the wake of the tensions between the elected government and the army, Pakistan’s Ministry of Defence has stated that it has “no operational control over the army and ISI.” It made this admission in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court regarding its inability to respond formally on behalf of the armed forces and the ISI in respect of their stand on the ‘memogate’ scandal. Tensions between the army and the civilian government have been rising over a memo that was reportedly sent at President Zardari’s behest to Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, about a coup that the army was said to be planning following the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Meanwhile, the army chief, General Pervez Ashfaq Kayani, has petitioned the Supreme Court to “thoroughly investigate” the memogate scandal as it has a bearing on national security and sovereignty. It emerges clearly that the army and the ISI are at loggerheads with the elected civilian government and would like it to go. However, they do not as yet appear to be prepared to stage another military coup to dislodge the government.

Given the stranglehold that the Pakistan army enjoys over the country’s polity, the army should be content to drive the country’s major policies from the back seat. However, if there is another military coup, it will certainly not be the last one. Pakistan has a history of military coups that go back to the era of General Ayub Khan. General Musharraf was the last military dictator of the country. He yielded power to a civilian dispensation very reluctantly and that too only after being hounded by an uncharacteristically pro-active Supreme Court.

Pakistan has become a rentier state that is dependent on Uncle Sam’s aid. Its economy is in shambles. It can default any time on its loan repayment obligations. Its currency is down to rupees 90 to a U.S. dollar. Inflation is flying high in double digits. The number of people living below the subsistence level is going up steadily. Relations with the U.S. are at an all time low. The security situation within Pakistan is dismal. Interior Minister Rehman Malik was recently reduced to thanking the Taliban for maintaining peace during Muharram.

At a time when all sections of Pakistan’s polity should unite together to fight the scourge of internal instability and creeping Talibanisation, it is incomprehensible that the army and the ISI should be jostling for narrow political gains to restore their hegemony. Unless Pakistan’s army is tamed and cut to size, it will continue to thwart Pakistan’s fledgling democracy from taking firm roots. Only an Arab Spring type of revolution will be able to clip the army’s wings. Alas, it does not look imminent.

 

Pakistan’s Intransigence over Prosecution of Perpetrators of the Mumbai Terror Strikes is Hampering Rapprochement

Three years ago, on November 26, 2008, ten Lashkar-e-Tayebba terrorists, trained, equipped, sponsored and directed by Pakistan’s ISI, landed by boat at Mumbai and carried out audacious strikes on four iconic targets before nine of them were eliminated by Indian security forces. Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor, was tried by a Special Court and has been sentenced to death. Despite the voluminous evidence provided to Pakistan about the perpetrators and the planners of the diabolical strikes by India, and corroborated by independent investigations conducted by the United States and Israel, the Pakistan government has failed to act against any of them.

Writing in the Hindu last week, Praveen Swami stated, “Sajid Mir, Lashkar commander who crafted the assault plan, has been reported by both the United States and India’s intelligence services as operating out of his family home near the Garrison Club in Lahore; Pakistan’s Federal Investigations Agency hasn’t yet got around to paying him a visit. Muzammil Bhat, who trained the assault team, is claimed by Pakistan to be a fugitive, though two journalists who went looking for the terror commander in Muzaffarabad located him without great effort. Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, sole senior Lashkar operative held for his alleged role in the attacks, has continued to communicate with his organisation from prison. Pakistan hasn’t, tellingly, even sought to question David Headley, Pakistani-American jihadist who has provided the investigators with a detailed insider account of the attacks — including the role of the Inter-Services Intelligence in directing them.”

Pakistan’s intransigence in bringing the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror strikes to justice does not augur well for the recently resumed Composite Dialogue Process. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has stated that he will travel to Pakistan only after the terrorists who attacked Mumbai are convicted by Pakistani courts. Even Hillary Clinton, the U.S. secretary of State has expressed her reservations about the Pakistan government’s “continuing failure, in our view, to fulfil all of the requirements necessary for prosecution related to the Mumbai attacks.” Unless Pakistan makes serious efforts to prosecute the terrorists and their handlers, the gains in the relationship made recently due to the announcement of MFN status by Pakistan and the proposed liberalisation of the Visa regime will lose value.

Within India too the follow up action to prevent another Mumbai-type terror strike has left much to be desired. The government had launched five major initiatives to shore up counter-terrorism capabilities. The first of these was to decentralise the deployment of the National Security Guards (NSG) – the agency that had eliminated the terrorists holed up in two hotels and the Jewish centre at Mumbai – to the major metropolitan centres besides Delhi so as to reduce the time taken to react against a terrorist strike. This has been done though the NSG commandos continue to face accommodation problems. The government has set up the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for post-incident investigation of major terrorist strikes. Unlike the U.S. FBI, the NIA lacks a counter-terrorism punch and cannot, therefore, assist in the prevention of terrorist strikes. It is to be hoped that the NIA will not be politicised like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CB).

While some efforts have been made to enhance coastal security, these efforts have fallen much short of the desired capabilities and India’s long coastline remains vulnerable to attacks from the sea. This was demonstrated with telling effect when an abandoned ship drifted all the way across the Arabian Sea to beach on the Mumbai coast without being detected by either the Indian Navy or the Coast Guard or the Marine Police.

Intelligence gathering, analysis, assessment and dissemination still need to be improved by an order of magnitude. The functioning of the existing Multi-agency Centre (MAC) has been streamlined but Home Minister P Chidambaram’s initiatives to establish a National Counter-terrorism Centre (NCTC) to coordinate all counter-terrorism efforts and a National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) database to maintain widely shared records of all terrorism-related intelligence and activities, are still to see the light of day because of Centre-State issues and inter-ministerial turf battles.

Clearly, India’s counter-terrorism responses continue to resemble a lumbering elephant, rather than a tiger ready to pounce.

Pakistan’s Nuclear Doctrine is Destabilising

Pakistan’s recent announcement that it has successfully tested the nuclear-tipped Hatf-9 (Nasr) short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) with a range of 65 km has caused serious concern in India as SRBMs are inherently destabilising. The announcement has come at a time when a move to eliminate SRBMs from the nuclear arsenals of South Asia had begun to gather momentum.

Unlike India’s nuclear weapons and missile development programme that was completely indigenous, Pakistan received considerable external help and, in turn, has itself been a proliferator. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons – warheads and delivery systems – are India-centric and have been acquired with Chinese and North Korean help. While India follows a “credible minimum deterrence” doctrine and has declared a “no first use” policy, Pakistan follows a “first use” nuclear doctrine and seeks to India that it has a low nuclear threshold.India’s nuclear weapons are political weapons whose sole purpose is to deter the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons against India.Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are its first line of defence and it aims to use them to negateIndia’s conventional military superiority.

Pakistan has been testing its ballistic and nuclear-capable cruise missiles at the rate of one every two months on average. It is apparently engaged in improving the accuracy of its North Korean origin No Dong and Taepo Dong missiles and of the Chinese missiles M-9 and M-11.

Though Pakistan’€™s nuclear warheads are based on a Chinese design that uses highly enriched uranium as the fissionable core, it is known to be gradually switching over to Plutonium 239 for future nuclear warheads. Dr. Peter Lavoy has written, “According to public estimates of Pakistan’s fissile material stockpile at the end of 2006, Islamabad probably had amassed between 30 and85 kilogramsof weapon-grade plutonium from its Khushab research reactor and between 1300 and1700 kilogrammes of weapon-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the Kahuta gas centrifuge facility. The Khushab reactor can probably produce between 10 and15 kilogrammes  of plutonium per year. Kahuta may be able to produce100 kilogrammes of HEU each year. Assuming that Pakistani scientists require 5 to 7 kilogrammes of plutonium to make one warhead, and 20 to 25 kilogrammes of HEU to produce a bomb, then Pakistan would have accumulated enough fissile material to be able to manufacture between 70 and 115 nuclear weapons by the end of2006.”

Estimates of Pakistan’s nuclear warheads stockpile vary according to the source. However, Pakistan is generally credited with the capability of having stockpiled 60 to 80 nuclear warheads and is moving rapidly towards triple-digit figures. Unlike India, Pakistan is making efforts to acquire tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons. It has also been reported that Pakistan is working towards miniaturizing its nuclear warheads for use on the Babur cruise missile.

Pakistan’s nuclear command and control is firmly in the army hands. Its National Command Authority has an Employment Control Committee and a Development Control Committee. Most of the posts are held by senior members of the armed forces. Staff support for day to day functioning is provided by the Strategic Plans Division (SPD). The strategic missile forces are placed under the Army Strategic Command. While on paper the President is Chairman of the NCA and the Prime Minister is Vice Chairman, the NCA was constituted during the Musharraf regime and it is most unlikely that the army will ever hand over control of nuclear weapons to the civilian leadership.